Random stolen pictures...

We had to hang out at mom and dad's house this afternoon with Echo during our open house. The realtor said it went really well -- nine people came by (or nine families... was probably more than nine total) and the feedback was really good. Everyone seemed to like the house -- especially since it's practically brand new. (It actually still has "new house smell" -- I don't notice it most of the time because I'm used to it, but after we were gone in Hawaii for a week, I noticed it as soon as I walked back into the house. It was like, "ahhhh... new house smell..." :)) The realtor said there were three people in particular who were especially interested, so we'll see if anything happens next week.

While I was at mom and dad's house, I stole some of mom's Hawaii pictures off her computer. So here's a few more random vacation pictures:

It was not only freezing cold at the top of Haleakala, it was also really windy... (and I was too cold to push the hair out of my face...)


A nice pic of Rick's parents and my parents...


Mom and dad had the best hotel room for sunsets... they always seem to end up with the "good" room... I'm not sure that's a coincidence... (just kidding, mom and dad! :))

Those are dad's feet after he slid down the waterslide... dad and Eric and Rick all used the waterslide every day, but otherwise, it was pretty much exclusively used by little kids... (okay, maybe there were a FEW more adults who used it... but it was pretty funny to watch all the guys line up behind groups of little kids to use the waterslide... :))

That's dad and Rick in the ocean...

One of the places we stopped had all these rock piles all over the place -- people create them because they see all the OTHER rock piles, and assume there is some kind of significance to all these little towers of rock. But the truth is, they don't mean anything. They're just piles of rocks... (but I decided to place one more meaningless rock on top of this meaningless tower...)

Debbie and me...

Mom posing in front of the sign at her restaurant (where we had Hula Pie... I miss Hula Pie... :))

Another great sunset picture... if you look reeeeaaaally closely, you can see three heads bobbing in the ocean -- that would be dad and Rick and Eric...

Some of the lava flow from an 18th century eruption... I think it was the last time Haleakala really erupted... so it's probably due to unleash fury again any moment now...

Cute picture of Eric and Debbie at the luau in Lahaina...

And here we are in the Maui airport waiting to check in for our flight home... it was a sad day...

Happy Friday (and some Hawaii pictures)...

So Rick is on his way home from Chicago, after his first week at the new job. We're both really hoping the house will sell quickly -- me because I'd really like to find a place to get settled in Chicago, and I hate it when the house is so quiet at night (Piva is great to have around, because she sleeps on the bed with me every night... Allegro has always been so much more of an independent cat -- she just sprawls out on the couch by herself)... and Rick wants the house to sell quickly because in the meantime, he has to live out of a hotel three or four days a week. His boss said something to him about how most sales reps seem to gain about 20 pounds when they move out to the field -- because they tend to eat out a lot when they're meeting with accounts. This is NOT something I wanted to hear... I've gone to much effort to change the way we eat and how much exercise we get, and it's been beneficial to both of us. We're really gonna have to be careful about adjusting to this new life in Chicago... all that Chicago deep-dish pizza... and great restaurants... and Ghirardelli's...

Our first open house is Sunday, and I think I've pretty much done as much as I can around the house to make it appealing to prospective buyers. (Except for that horrifying empty dining room...) The one thing I still have to do is organize the closet -- I have a whole pile of clothes and shoes in the middle of the closet that I want to donate to Goodwill or Salvation Army. But I think the house preparation was just generally easier this time than it was with the last house -- because we got rid of so much stuff when we sold the last house, and haven't had time to accumulate much more in the last few months. So that IS one "plus" to moving into a new house and immediately selling it a few months later... :)

I've been so busy this week that I just got around to downloading all my Hawaii pictures to my computer today... so here are a few more pictures from our trip:

Zoom in of the beach at sunset from my hotel balcony...

And this was the view right outside the door to our hotel room... see the rainbow?

A sand crab... this is kind of a bad picture, but it was nighttime on the beach -- if you went out to the beach after dark (when it was usually devoid of people) and waited very quietly and without moving too much, sand crabs would start crawling out of the sand. To be honest, it was rather creepy -- you could see them crawling around in the dark, and if you made any kind of sudden movements, they would dive right back into the sand (where, apparently, they reside during the day, when people are lying on the beach -- totally oblivious to the army of crabs inches beneath their feet... think about THAT next time you're trying to get a tan...)

Sunset in Lahaina...

At one of my favorite places in Hawaii -- the Maui Ocean Center...

Me, Eric D. and Debbie looking at the fish...

I love these jellyfish -- they have them in a dark room with a blacklight shining on them, so they're flourescent... so cool...

Sea turtle saying hello...

They have a plexiglass tunnel you can walk through, and all the fish are swimming around you, like you're right in the middle of the ocean. They also have a few sharks in there -- because it's always fun to pretend like you're swimming with the sharks... (it's less fun to ACTUALLY swim with the sharks...)

I'll even throw in the bath salts...

It’s been a very busy week since our return from Hawaii. I mean, of COURSE the Chicago offer we’d been waiting on for two months would show up in the middle of vacation – they couldn’t have figured this all out and sent it to us at a more opportune time (like TWO MONTHS ago…). So there was no time to lazily readjust to the five hour time difference and leisurely catch up on laundry – no, we had to immediately run out to the mall to buy Rick a decent carry-on bag and some proper new-job clothing, which I then had to wash and iron for his Tuesday morning trip up to Chicago. Then I had to unpack and catch up on vacation laundry, and start cleaning the house so when it goes on the market it’ll look halfway decent…

Today someone came to take pictures for the listing, so I had to have everything looking nice and clutter-free. Realtors are very adamant about making sure your house is “clutter-free.” So in addition to cleaning the entire house, I’ve also been packing up boxes of knickknacks and books and things I don’t anticipate needing for the next few months…

We had a “staging” specialist visit the house (weeks ago, when we first thought the job offer was imminent) at the advice of our realtor – supposedly, houses that are “staged” sell more readily than houses that are left at the random whims of their owners. If you pay enough money, a staging specialist will fill your house with furniture, accessories, flower arrangements, copies of “War and Peace,” fake diplomas, pictures of that time you traveled to Africa with the Peace Corps, etc, etc. The idea is to make your house seem more impressive and “comfortable” – people are supposed to get “emotionally attached” to your house when they walk in, resulting in a more positive impression. And apparently empty rooms are looked down upon – we have nothing in our dining room right now (we weren’t even planning to use it as a dining room… more as a library or study…), and the stager gave us a big spiel about how people might have conniption fits when they walk into the house and see an empty room. “Oh no! An empty room! Why don’t they have furniture? Why are they leaving this house so fast?? Is it built over an ancient Indian burial ground like in Poltergeist???” – This is the sort of home-buying panic the stager tried to convince us would result from an empty room…

The problem is, all that “emotional connection” with potential buyers can end up costing a lot of money. The stager told us we could “only” spend two or three thousand dollars if we didn’t want to go overboard – that would at least pay for a table and chairs for the dining room and some wall art. But here’s the thing – Rick and I have looked at a LOT of houses. In the last ten years we’ve moved three times… and we’ve been looking at places in Chicago for at least a year, because we kept thinking we’d be moving. And in all that time that I’ve gone out house-hunting, not ONCE have I walked into a house, seen an empty room, and felt complete panic over the reason for such a lack of furniture. Heck, the house we bought in New Jersey wasn’t even FINISHED when we bought it. Forget about flower arrangements and wall art – it didn’t even have kitchen cabinets when we made our decision. Who CARES why someone has an empty room in the house? I’m buying the HOUSE – not the furniture and accessories.

So instead of giving the staging specialist thousands of dollars, I went to Target and spent considerably less on a few small items. Some throw pillows for the bed, a couple shower curtains so the extra bathrooms look “finished” (“argh! An empty, perfectly clean bathroom! HOW can I possibly buy this house??”), some fake flowers… but in general, I’m just making sure the house is clean and bright and, well, a LIVABLE SPACE – because that’s what I’m trying to sell.

So hopefully the empty dining room won’t be a huge deal-breaker. Maybe I should make it clear that whoever buys this house also gets two free shower curtains and some fake flower arrangements… (free shower curtains? Sold!) :)

Goodbye Hawaii... hello Chicago...

A strange thing happened while we were in Hawaii -- the elusive, mythical, much sought after "Chicago job offer" (which I'd long ago decided was never actually going to appear, but rather remain a sort of folklore tale passed down from generation to generation) suddenly materialized. Wow. It DOES exist. It was not, unfortunately, quite the offer we were hoping for, but after some quick mathematical calculations we realized it worked out to only 200 dollars a month less than what we considered "ideal" -- and we can probably cut 200 dollars a month from our budget just by visiting Starbucks less often or driving fewer miles (which will hopefully be a given once we move to Chicago and things are within walking distance). So we have about five days to rush around and get the house ready to put up for sale... which should be really fun, what with the jet lag and all... :)

So we're waiting in the Maui airport for our flight to board, depressed about the end of vacation, yet looking forward to getting ready for Chicago. I've noticed something about the people at this particular gate -- everyone looks rather tired and defeated, as if no one WANTS to leave, yet we really have no choice. Whereas on the WAY to Hawaii, people generally look much more happy and energetic. And I'm definitely not too excited about this trip home -- our flight leaves at 10:40, so we'll be flying overnight... and I can never seem to get much sleep on planes, even when I'm exhausted. So by the time we get into Austin tomorrow afternoon, all I'll want is a really long nap... I'm already looking forward to it...

But for now, I think I'll take a little airport terminal walk, since I'll be stuck on a plane for the next several hours...

Sigh... last night in Hawaii...

I can't believe we already have to leave tomorrow night. Six nights really goes fast in Hawaii... (I may "accidentally" miss my flight tomorrow...) We don't leave until around 10 o'clock tomorrow night, so we're planning on one more trip to Leilani's on the Beach for Hula Pie (I wish they could pack that stuff in dry ice and ship it to the mainland... I wonder if they'd do that for me...)

Here are some pictures from the last few days:

We drove up to the north side of the island the other day, where we explored some of the cliffs. Dad and Eric, of course, decided to hike down the rocky hill to this blow hole...

The rest of us waited at the top (and waved down to dad and Eric at the bottom)...

A crab in a tidepool along the shore a bit south of the hotel...

We went to the "Old Lahaina Luau" last night, which I've heard described by many people/magazines as the "best luau in Hawaii." Well, the general consensus last night was that the luau we attended in Kauai was much better. But the Lahaina luau DID have lots of shirtless Hawaiian guys...

Shirtless Hawaiian guy...

Whole buncha shirtless Hawaiian guys...

Hula dancer...

Hula dancers...

Me at the luau at sunset...

Me and Rick at the luau...

I think I'd rather have Gatorade...

We spent the better part of the day wending our way up Haleakala crater (I think I may have spelled that wrong, but I'm too lazy to look up the correct spelling at the moment...), which is a dormant -- but not extinct -- volcano on Maui. And even though this was the third time I've made the journey to the top, I forgot what a long drive it was. It's about 40 miles from the hotel, which doesn't seem TOO long until you start driving up the steep, winding road to the top of the crater. It's impossible to go much faster than 20 or 30 miles per hour most of the way... and every few miles, a sign appears on the side of the road to announce the elevation -- 2500 feet... 4000 feet... 6500 feet (somewhere around this point, the lack of oxygen becomes more obvious to those of us who are prone to altitude sickness...). It tops out at 10,023 feet. So one of the interesting things about traveling up to Haleakala is that it's FREEZING when you reach the top. Within a few hours, you go from bikini-on-the-beach weather to need-a-warm-sweatshirt weather. In fact, one of the park rangers informed us that two inches of snow fell on the summit this past winter. Yep, it DOES snow in Hawaii...


A few pictures:

Sunset on our first night in Maui...

Fountain in the lobby of the hotel...

On top of Haleakala looking down into the crater...

Me and Rick with his parents...


Rick's parents under the elevation sign...

Me in my long-sleeved jacket -- totally appropriate for Hawaii, don't you think??

This may quite possibly be the strangest sign I've ever seen -- it was in the bathroom at the park. Do they REALLY need to warn people not to drink out of the toilet?? What kind of weirdo people are visiting this place??? If the water was NOT reclaimed, would anyone honestly think it was perfectly safe to drink? How thirsty do you have to be to drink public toilet water? I mean, I wouldn't even drink the water out of my OWN toilet at home, let alone a toilet in the middle of a national park...

We don't really have any plans for tomorrow, although my mom is anxious to eat at Leilani's on the Beach sometime this week. And not only because it's named after her, but also because they have Hula Pie. Mmmmmmm... Hula Pie... :)

Aloha from Maui!!

We made it to Maui -- it's almost 6:00 Hawaii time, which is 11:00 pm back home. And after a nearly-sleepless night (I think I got about two hours of decent sleep... and after talking to everyone else in our vacation party, that seems to be about the average...) and a 4 am wake-up, we're all fairly ready to keel over. Yet we are determined to honor our 6:30 dinner reservation at one of the restaurants here at the hotel. After which I'm certain I will dazedly walk back to the room, collapse into bed, and lapse into a coma until daylight...

Our flights were very uneventful, which is exactly the kind of flight I like -- no delays, smooth takeoff, smooth landing, not enough turbulence to speak of... in fact, I'd have to say, as far as air travel goes, it was a perfect journey to the islands. Which makes for a really boring blog post, but hey, I'm so tired right now I probably wouldn't be much of a storyteller even if I HAD a story to tell...

In fact, one of the things I've always found peculiar about being tired-to-the-point-of-exhaustion is that I start to feel like I'm on a cruise ship. There's a slight sensation of motion, as if I'm being rocked back and forth by invisible waves. That's when I know I've been awake for WAY too long...

Hopefully after a decent night's sleep I'll have the energy to start snapping pictures so I can have something more interesting to post tomorrow... :)

Arrivederci!

Wait -- arrivederci?? Why am I using Italian when I’m going to Hawaii?? I don’t know… but it was the first thing that popped into my head, for some reason…

Our plane leaves at a little after 7 tomorrow morning, which means we’re leaving the house at about 5… which means we have to be up by around 4:30… yippee. I know, I know – I shouldn’t complain when I’m on my way to Hawaii. :) But I gotta tell ya, that time zone change the first night is brutal… especially when I’ll be getting up at 4:30 in the morning. I know we’ll be TRYING to stay up as long as we can once we get to Maui, but I usually end up conking out around 10 – which will be 3 in the morning back here in Austin. So let’s see – I’ll be getting up at 4:30 in the morning, and then attempting to stay awake until at least 3 in the morning. I’m exhausted just thinking about it… (must focus on what’s important – Hawaii. Hawaii… :))

Well, the Betrayal of Trust otherwise known as “taking the pets to the kennel” is complete. I absolutely HATE carting off all my pets to a kennel. Cats and dogs are SO trusting of their owners – they look at you with those big eyes, seemingly thinking, “I know YOU’LL never do anything bad to me…” and then you cram the cats into little carriers and whisk them and the dog off to a strange place full of strange smells and strange people and strange cats and dogs, where they’ll spend the next week in a little bitty box. I always feel soooooo guilty when I do this. I just have to keep telling myself that they’ll be just fine. And once they’re home, they forget all about it after a day or two… (They’re REALLY gonna hate us if we have to move them to Chicago…)

Anyway, I have to get back to packing, because I’m hoping to be done early enough to get a decent night’s sleep. Check back soon, because I’m sure I’ll be posting pictures – as soon as I get used to that time change… :)

Flippin' fantastic...

I ran across this picture earlier, and it made me laugh:

Not the sign itself, but the name of the church. That has to be the funniest name for a church I've ever seen... apparently it's in flippin' Arkansas... uh, I mean, Flippin, Arkansas. Which also happens to be the best name for a town in Arkansas that I've ever heard. I mean, have you ever BEEN to flippin' Arkansas? The flippin' roads are a mess, the flippin' people have never heard of hot tea (true story), the flippin' average IQ seems to hover somewhere around 80... (Gosh, I'm being really mean to Arkansas... I hope no one from Arkansas is reading this blog... of course, now I've mentioned "Arkansas" so many times that no doubt my blog will pop up on some Google search results list for "people who hate Arkansas.") I'm kidding -- Arkansas is great... they have, um... the Ozarks. Yeah. In fact, I often buy Ozarka bottled water, which comes straight from... oh, how weird. Ozarka water comes from Texas. By way of Connecticut. Alrighty then...

To be fair, it was only ONE, or maybe two or three, people in Arkansas who didn't know how to make hot tea. We were driving through on our way to Austin, and stopped at a McDonald's for breakfast. My mom isn't much of a coffee person, so she asked for a hot tea. And I've never seen such a simple request completely befuddle human beings in my life. They dazedly told my mom that they had ICED tea, but weren't so sure about hot tea. At which point, the conversation went something like this:

Mom: Do you have tea bags?

Tea-challenged person (holding up bag of Lipton): Yes.

Mom: And do you have hot water?

Tea-challenged person: Yes.

Mom: Well, there ya go then.

This was also the same McDonald's where, as we sat down to enjoy our breakfast and miraculously-produced hot tea, someone came in and asked who was driving whichever make and model of car we had at the time. When we said it was ours, they told us we had to move our car so they could get to the dumpster. And we were not, by the way, just parked willy-nilly in front of the dumpster -- we were parked in a proper, marked parking space which our car had every right to occupy. (Hey, how about YOU wait until the restaurant patrons are finished, and THEN do whatever you need to do with the dumpster?? You don't just order customers to move their cars so you can save a few minutes of time...)

Rick and I have also had many an Arkansas-related complaint -- mostly because of the horrible, ridiculously bumpy roads (which, to their credit, they finally began to repave several years ago... maybe they're done and FINALLY smooth by now...). The one thing that sticks out in my mind is our stay in a Little Rock hotel where housekeeping tried to get into our room at 7 am. Fortunately, I always make sure the little latch-thingy is secured, so even though they were able to unlock the door, they could only open it a few inches. But that, plus several more run-ins with rude/unknowledgeable/just plain strange residents, convinced us to always get through Arkansas as quickly as possible.

Maybe it's just the nature of interstate travel... or maybe it's just flippin' Arkansas...

Cappuccino is worth waiting for...

When Rick and I were in New York in July, we noticed something interesting at the Starbucks around the corner from our hotel. All of the pastries in the glass case were labeled not only with a description, but also with a calorie count. I thought it was a great idea – I often wonder how significantly one of those sweet treats will set me back in my quest to eat a balanced diet. And usually, the unknown quantity isn’t worth the extra time I’d have to spend on the treadmill, so I bypass the entire pastry case…

We later found out that New York had passed a law requiring calorie counts to appear on menu items. Or at least on items at places like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts – I don’t remember any calorie counts on actual restaurant menus, but I think the law was pretty new. So maybe menus have been changed by now. And I think it’s a great idea, because it can help you make better choices – but it seems Starbucks saw a sudden decrease in sales of all those pastries. Apparently people never REALIZED they were eating 480 calories when they consumed one of those glazed donuts, or 450 calories when they polished off a scone. Personally, I don’t think it should’ve come as such a huge surprise – donuts have never been considered “health food,” so what did you expect, exactly??

But Starbucks, being the health-conscious company it is (hey, there have been tons of studies that say coffee is GOOD for you…), decided to add a few new menu items with LOWER calorie counts. Which look so much better on those little placards in the glass case, I’m sure. (I wish they would do that calorie count thing here in Austin, but so far, I think it’s just New York…)

So this morning we decided to try one of the new lower-calorie menu items – the apple bran muffin. We ordered two cappuccinos and the muffin, and then stood over near the end of the counter to wait for our coffee. In the meantime, we munched on the muffin, which turned out to be quite good, actually. I wasn’t sure about that “bran” part – “bran muffin” doesn’t exactly conjure up visions of delicious decadence. But it was very good – and along with the apples, there were whole cherries scattered throughout the muffin. And I LOVE cherries. (It was also interesting, because just yesterday we were trying to convince my mom that she should make an apple/cherry pie sometime, and she made a face that suggested, “apples and cherries should never intermix… they must be forever segregated…” Yet the apples and cherries in the apple bran muffin melded together very nicely. Just FYI, mom, in case you change your mind about the apple/cherry pie. :))

Anyway, as we stood there at the end of the counter, taking bites of muffin out of our take-away paper bag until nothing was left but a few crumbs and a stray cherry (which I plucked out of the bag and ate), we suddenly realized that a guy who was still PAYING for his drink was presented with his venti frappuccino as he stood in front of the cash register. And Rick and I had been waiting for OUR drinks so long that we’d eaten an entire muffin. When Rick inquired about this, the woman behind the cash register (who knows us because we’re in that Starbucks so often) smiled sheepishly and admitted she’d forgotten to tell the barista about our drinks. “You’re in here so often,” she said. “I’m used to everyone just KNOWING what you want.” Apparently, we’re such regulars at Starbucks that the employees automatically start on our drinks before we even order. Well, except today. But all was not lost – they gave us two coupons for free coffee…

So not only did we get a chance to try the new lower-calorie muffin, but we burned off most of the calories waiting for our coffee. Because everyone knows you burn more calories when you stand than when you sit… I want another muffin…

Friday random thoughts...

Well, we only have one week until our Hawaii trip! I know Rick and I will be really happy to just forget about this whole “are we moving to Chicago or not?” thing for a while. (That is, assuming the offer doesn’t come in next week. I think at this point we’ve decided the offer is NEVER going to show up… so if it actually DOES, we’ll be really surprised…) And I don’t know if it’s the fun of planning for a trip or just a general resignation, but I seem to be less stressed this week than I have been the past few weeks. I still have no clue what’s going on, and it’s driving me nuts… but at the same time, I’ve realized there’s nothing I can do about it. So I guess whatever happens, happens. And in the meantime, did I mention – Hawaii!!

So lots of political stuff going on the last few weeks… I don’t usually like to talk about politics, but can I just say – McCain/Palin = awesome!! Palin ALONE blows Obama out of the water… and McCain and Palin together make Obama and Biden look like a couple of little kids playing “Let’s Pretend We’re Running for Office.” One of the things that has really struck me the last couple weeks as I’ve listened to Obama and McCain is how much more genuine McCain seems – Obama reminds me of a used car salesman. He’s very careful about what he says and how he words things – he’s telling everyone what he thinks they want to hear. And maybe that’s just the way he talks, but I’ve gotta say – it makes him appear quite shady and untrustworthy. Get him away from a teleprompter, and he tends to be a bit lost. It really IS evident that he has quite a lack of experience compared to McCain, and I think all of the aimless, hysterical Obama-worship is getting ridiculous. It’s very obvious which of these men is better suited to run a country… the question is – how many Americans will RECOGNIZE that fact, and not be blinded by the “pop star” mentality of our culture? As Rick pointed out last night when one of our friends said McCain’s speech was “boring” – this ain’t American Idol. I’d rather have a president with a little less “charisma” and little more substance…

Okay, off the soapbox… :) I have refrained from talking much about my fantasy baseball team this year, mostly because I’ve been firmly entrenched in eighth place for a really long time. Which is better than where I began – with NEGATIVE points on the first day. And it took me a little while to climb out of the hole, thanks in part to my number-one draft pick, C.C. Sabathia. He had a horrible start – his first four games gave me 9, -2, -14 and -15 points, for an average of -5.5. Which probably meant he was one of the worst pitchers in the league. But I held on to him anyway, because I refused to believe that I’d totally wasted my first pick… even with his dismal, negative-point season start, I had faith that he’d turn things around. And then, all of a sudden, a light bulb went off above his head (figuratively, of course… well, actually, I can’t be sure it wasn’t literal… I haven’t been watching all his games…) and he remembered how to pitch. And the last few months he’s gone from one of the worst pitchers in the league to the best. So I think C.C. is at least partly the reason why, when I looked at my team this morning, I noticed that I have FINALLY broken out of eighth place and am now in seventh. (At least temporarily…)

As Rick said in his comment under my last post, my “chicken baked in the oven in a very hot pan” experiment went quite well. The chicken was great, and I managed to not burn myself. Whew. My next experiment will be cold peach soup – which requires no heat whatsoever. So I SHOULD be safe…

Well, I guess that’s all the random stuff I can come up with for now… hope everyone has a good weekend!

Wish me luck...

I was reading through one of my fitness magazines the other day, and thumbing past a few pages of recipes, and I saw one that looked interesting. Spinach and goat cheese stuffed chicken with an artichoke and kalamata olive sauce. Yum. Some people (like my mom) don’t like goat cheese, but I find it lends a lot of flavor to a dish without adding many calories (which would explain why it was in a magazine devoted to fitness…). So I decided right away that I would have to try the recipe and see if it was worth adding to my recipe repertoire…

My mom and I went to Whole Foods this afternoon, and I bought all the necessary ingredients. (And on a side note – I’ve always gone to Whole Foods on the weekend, so I thought the droves of people were just a weekend crowd. Turns out Whole Foods is ALWAYS crowded… even on a Tuesday. I think we need a couple more Whole Foods stores in this city.) And then I came home and read through the recipe a little more thoroughly – after assembling the spinach/goat cheese/chicken, you brown it in a pan for several minutes, add the artichokes, olives and some chicken broth, and then place the pan in the oven to finish it off.

Uh oh. I have to put one of my pans in the oven again…

The burn on my arm from my last “pan in the oven” experience is fading a bit every day. And it would NOT be amusing if I added another injury from tonight’s recipe tryout. So I shall be c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y cooking my chicken dish… oven mitts at the ready, ice on standby, perhaps the number for a hospital burn unit on speed dial...

THIS time, I am determined to emerge unscathed…